Triteleia peduncularis and offsets from corms
Mary Sue Ittner (Sun, 09 Jul 2006 07:41:57 PDT)

Writing my last post about vegetative increasing of Tecophilaea led me to
the following thought so I am posting it separately.

We had a discussion earlier about a form of Triteleia ixioides from Table
Mountain that does not offset whereas other Triteleia ixioides produce many
corms. I find that growing many of the cormous species in the Themidaceae
family there is a great variation in the ones that produce offsets even in
the same species. The form of Triteleia laxa that is so often sold, Queen
Fabiola, produces many cormlets which is no doubt the reason it is a
popular cultivar to sell as it is quick to increase. Some of the ones I
grow increase very modestly. We have discovered Triteleia peduncularis
growing on the Mendocino and Sonoma coast this year. It has to have been
here before, but I can't remember seeing it. We had late rains so maybe
that was the difference. Perhaps it has dried up before it bloomed before
as there were still a few finishing blooms on the 4th when I looked for
seed. This Triteleia is very low with much shorter pedicels than the ones I
grow and have seen before which ruins the key I made a number of years ago
as a long pedicel is usually the distinctive way to identify this species.
Many of the pedicels were about the same size as the flower and some were
almost but not quite twice the size of the flower. The pedicel elongated a
bit once the flower had finished, but even when we went back later and
looked at these plants the pedicel was often much shorter than I've seen
before. The ovary was yellow, but when I returned three or four weeks later
had turned to green. It was a good example for me of why keys are so
difficult. To find characteristics that fit all forms of a species can be
tricky. It partly depends on when you look at the plant besides the
variation in forms. In the future no doubt we will just point our dna
machines and push a button and the species name will appear so we won't
need to know the identifying features. ;-) The T. peduncularis I grow has
multiple baby corms every year. I wonder if this form increases
vegetatively. There didn't seem to be a lot of leaves around the flowering
clumps, but they could have died back by now. If you are interested in
seeing this new form of T. peduncularis I've added it to the wiki:
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Mary Sue

Mary Sue Ittner
California's North Coast
Wet mild winters with occasional frost
Dry mild summers